Vladimir Putin

Berlin has been long been seen as the European capital most understanding – and indulgent – of Russia. But that’s  changing, says CATHRIN SCHAER. For several years now, German newspapers have been proclaiming the next new low in the German-Russian relationship. There was 2015’s Russian hacker attack on the German parliament that started the decline. Then the assassination […]

Liana Semchuk on whether Alexei Navalny’s reappearance in Russia could galvanise change in the country in the same way as Lenin just over a century ago. Political commentators both inside Russia and around the world are comparing Alexei Navalny’s return to Moscow with Vladimir Lenin’s ‘sealed train’ journey from Switzerland to St Petersburg in April 1917. It […]

Joe Biden will be an infinitely tougher prospect for Vladimir Putin than Donald Trump. Yet the Russian president still has time on his side, says JOHN KAMPFNER. George W Bush, not a man commonly thought of as soft, said this of Vladimir Putin at their first meeting in 2001: “I looked the man in the […]

Russian president Vladimir Putin is going to “wait” for the final results before commenting on the conclusion, a spokesperson has claimed. While most world leaders have congratulated Joe Biden on his win, Putin has yet to comment on Donald Trump’s loss. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said they would wait for the final outcome before providing […]

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a leading expert on chemical weapons, talks to MATT WITHERS about being on Vladimir Putin’s radar, weaponising Covid and complacency about the threats facing the West. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon’s autobiography starts like the opening of a high-octane film. It is February 1991, the protagonist, on his first military tour, is in the […]

Anti-Western philosopher Aleksandr Dugin is said to hold sway over Vladimir Putin. But it is not just the Russian president who is in thrall to him